three steps forward, two steps back: Proud

I was quite proud of myself for two accomplishments today.

The first took place after one of my little monkeys broke a glass in the bathroom sink.Some pieces of glass ended up down the drain, and I thought I should get them out.

Jack was quite concerned throughout the whole ordeal. First for himself: “I am sorry I broke the glass, Mama. I just wanted to rinse it out like you do.” After he was no longer worried for himself, he became worried for me: “Daddy is going to be mad when he gets home and sees that you used his tools. This looks very bad now. (after I took several parts out of the drain in order to reach the glass) Daddy is going to be mad that this is a very big mess now.” After I had put the sink pieces back together, Jack was ecstatic – I guess because no one was in trouble. He put the tools back on in their rightful locations on the garage pegboard (a job that apparently takes a 4-year-old 8 minutes instead of the 8 seconds it takes an adult…I was super patient!) “We did an awesome job, Mama. And it was so, so, so, easy, right?”

[And, for the record, Eric is fine with me using his tools, will be quite happy that I did not save the job for him to do, and will be ecstatic that the tools were put back in their rightful place…]

The second accomplishment of the day was helping my mom to hang up the photo collage that she had given to my grandma for her 80th birthday.

We put the photos on a big sheet of butcher paper on the floor..

and used my mom’s quilting ruler and a very old yard stick to space the frames just so. (We are both pretty exacting when it comes to measuring things…)

We taped the paper to the wall…

And hung the frames on the wall right through the paper.

Grandpa double-checked our work after I started complaining that the level had stopped working and he informed me that I was holding it upside-down...(Seriously?! I have never heard of there even being an “upside-down” to a level!!?? But, in my own defense – there usually isn’t such a thing as an upside down level– unless you happen to be using a level that was produced before 1920 – which, I guess, I was. This level had apparently been passed down a few generations. Man, they just don’t make things the way they used to, do they grandpa?)

After we hung all of the photos over the paper guide, we took them back off the wall. We carefully ripped the paper down without letting the hooks come out. Then we hung the photos back up on the wall, adjusted a few things and voila!, the display was done.